University Partnerships

NVIDIA has forged close relationships with many of the world’s most respected universities and research institutions. NVIDIA Research, our academic partnership arm, explores challenging topics on the frontiers of visual, parallel and mobile computing and extends essential support to research projects. The linkages between NVIDIA and academia allow us to collaborate with leading researchers, attract top talent through our internship and new graduate hiring programs, and continue to build connections with professors and research facilities that are working to solve the world’s most complex scientific challenges.

Recent grant recipients from the NVIDIA Research Summit

Our internship program receives more than 15,000 applications annually. By selecting interns with care, we’ve made the program into an important source of new talent for us. Designed to replicate as closely as possible the experience of actual employment, the program assigns interns to active projects where they get to work alongside industry veterans and be mentored by some of our best and brightest. Interns are held accountable for their work and receive pay and a variety of benefits, including travel and housing assistance and the opportunity to contribute to a 401(k).

Our New College Grad program also attracts high-performing, talented individuals. Through our University Relations group, we work to actively develop these future grads and give them exposure to our business and technology. For more information, see our page on intern and co-op programs.

We continue to build relationships with the academic community by providing support for teaching, research and advanced education through five academic research programs. Our programs expand the teaching of GPUs and visual computing as well as support research that uses our technology to tackle some of the most complex computing challenges.

In the areas of teaching and education, we’re gratified to see momentum growing for books and courses that focus on programming GPUs with CUDA and Open GL. Our CUDA Center of Excellence (CCOE) program recognizes universities that are advancing the frontiers of GPU computing. Currently, we have CCOEs in the US, Europe and Asia, reflecting the international growth of this field.

University Recruiting

In 2011, we focused on improving two key areas of our onsite internship program, performance management and intern engagement and exposure:

We developed an intensive performance program where interns and their managers are given the opportunity to better manage their goals and tasks, and measure these throughout the course of the internship, by leveraging 1:1 meetings, evaluation forms and assistance from the University team.

We provided greater opportunities for interns to be exposed to the NVIDIA culture, community and business. Interns attended talks given by NVIDIA leaders from marketing and engineering, as well as our CEO. Interns were given the opportunity to spend time together on and off campus to network and learn about what was happening in all business units, as well as meet NVIDIA employees at company meetings, charity events and brown bag lunches.

We also made a bigger investment in our diversity efforts, spending double the amount of that in previous years and expanding our outreach to minority youth.

We advertised employment positions on the Society for Women Engineers (SWE) and National Society for Black Engineers. This allowed us to post our intern, new college graduate and senior level job openings at the nationally.

Attended SWE sponsored/run career fairs, and attended two SWE dinners hosted by the local chapter at Stanford University.

Hosted high school students at NVIDIA campus on several occasions. Exposed them to our technology and high tech career opportunities.

Partnered with After College on a six-month campaign to reach diversity candidates at the top 60 engineering schools in the United States.

Results of NVIDIA’s 2011 internship recruitment efforts.

Recruited students through visits to 29 colleges and universities (a 90% increase from 2010)

Approximately 15,000 resumes submitted as a direct result of our visits

Hosted 234 paid interns in the U.S., a 64% increase from 2010

Hired 135 new college graduates in the U.S. in 2011 (a 119% increase from 2010), 34 of whom were prior interns